A little preparation before you go away on a trip can be good for your wallet and the environment! Here are my 5 eco money saving going away tips!

1. Sort out your food

The first of my 5 eco money saving going away tips, is to check the contents of your fridge. Plus your fruit bowl and any other places you might have food that has a short shelf life. Stop it from going off while you are away by doing the following:

Freeze:

• Excess milk in ice cube trays
• Berries and grapes. They taste yummy as a frozen treat, but also blend nicely to make sorbets, icecreams, smoothies or ingredients in a crumble or pie.
• Bread. For sliced bread tilt each slice slightly in the bag. It makes it easier to separate the slices after being frozen.
• Bananas – freeze in their skins or slice into coins.
• Meat and fish. It can be frozen once before being cooked and once after being cooked.

Batch cook and then freeze:

Make:

• soup out of excess vegetables including salad. If you have an unwanted apple or pear, add that to the soup for added sweetness.
• a white sauce or cheese sauce out of excess milk and cheese
• Pasta sauce out of excess veg and tomatoes or passata
• Banana tea bread out of over ripe bananas and freeze to eat another time. Tip – make it into muffins instead using sillicone cases or a muffin baking tray to avoid disposable muffin cases.
• Juice leftover citrus fruit and other fruit that is easy to juice. Either drink straight away or freeze in icecube trays for another time.

If you are going to stay with friends or relatives you could take your fresh food with you to share with them there. Check first if they can make use of the food you are bringing and if they have space in their fridge / freezer for it.

Tip: if they do want the food but don’t have any space – freeze a couple of 2 litre bottles of water and put them in a cool pack to take the food in. The frozen water should keep the food cool for a couple of days.

If you are going to stay in a hotel or your friends and relatives don’t want your excess food, try your neighbours. Or give the food away via online food sharing sites and apps like Olio.

For more tips about how to reduce food waste check out this article here: Food waste – a challenge to avoid it for a day and a round up of use it up ideas

2. Turn things off at the plug switch

While you are away you don’t need to see the clock on your oven or have your TV system on standby.

Switch everything off at the plug unless it is something that needs to be on constantly like a fish tank or your fridge freezer. Also if you have set things up to record over the holidays on something like cable TV you need to leave the cable box turned on, but everything else can go off.

You will save money on the background energy usage you don’t need to be on and it is better for the environment not to use energy if you don’t need to.

3. Set your heating to 5 to 10 degrees

It is important to leave your heating on a bit while you are away so that your pipes don’t get too cold and potentially freeze and burst. Equally though you don’t want to be paying to heat your home at the same temperature you have it while you are there. It doesn’t need to be that hot, just hot enough to protect the pipes.

4. Put your fridge freezer on holiday mode

When you are at home, the fridge freezer gets opened and closed regularly. That allows cold air to escape and then the fridge and freezer needs to work harder to cool down again.

While you are away your fridge freezer has less work to do, because the doors stay shut. So you can put it on holiday mode. This lets it know that it doesn’t need to work as hard and it will use less energy.

5. Give away any cut flowers, still blooming or take them with you!

Have you been given flowers just before you are going away? It would be a real shame for them to look beautiful in your home while you aren’t there. Take them with you if you can or give them to a friend or relative to appreciate them instead!

So there you have it – 5 ways that getting organised before you go away can save money and the environment!

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What I thought they did well:

• The resort has been awarded a green key label as pictured above.
• They generate some of their own electricity via onsite solar panels.
• They save energy and water with motion sensitive lights and taps in the main toilet block at night.
• The toilet in our mobile home  had a dual flush option so you could choose to half flush.
• They only water the plants at night as in the heat of the day the water can evaporate really quickly. Watering at night means less water is needed overall
• Eurocamp couriers get around the site using bicycles instead of buggies or cars
• There is a sign in the laundry room encouraging people to save energy and hang out their washing instead of using the tumble dryers and clothes airers were provided to each mobile home.

• Some of the Eurocamp cleaning products that they use are fully biodegradable and the site management clean out their own mobile homes with bicarbonate of soda, vinegar and lemon juice (but they don’t clean out the Eurocamp ones).
• Any cleaning products left behind by guests are made use of by the Eurocamp couriers and they also keep any food that is unopened/ in good condition. Lost property is kept for 3 months in case it is claimed and if not claimed it is kept by the Eurocamp couriers if they can make use of it.
• At the Eurocamp reception they have a book swap area, which was great as my husband and I found and swapped a few books we liked there. They also had some sports and games equipment some of which had been left behind by other guests and they were very happy for us to swap/ borrow /keep. Top tip – if you want to go rock pooling and you haven’t got a net check out that area first as they are very expensive in the onsite shop. They are far less expensive in the local supermarket if you don’t have any luck at the Eurocamp reception.
• There is a recycling point in a car park just outside the campsite and lots of types of plastic, glass, paper, metal and card can be recycled there.
• Eurocamp really kindly provided us with various welcome packs, containing things like tea, coffee, wine, biscuits, salt, pepper, olive oil, cleaning products, towels and linen (you usually pay extra for these things). Two welcome packs came in boxes that were recyclable, the coffee was fairtrade and the cleaning products were a little bit eco, (although not quite as eco as I would have liked i.e. they came in a plastic bottle and one said it was less harmful to aquatic organisms – personally I would prefer no harm, but at least they were a start!)
• The mobile homes are only replaced when they reach the end of their life and at that point they are sold off and so do not go to waste.
• The site is very leafy and green and I noticed lots of butterflies fluttering around during our stay, which was lovely.

The mobile homes are self catering which leaves you in charge of the packaging you bring into them! Happily it is pretty easy to avoid packaging in Benodet. Unfortunately we failed at the first hurdle and somewhat unintentionally ended up buying practically two weeks worth of food from the supermarket on the day we got there, which was a shame as if we had been more restrained we could have bought more local and less packaged stuff, especially as we found the supermarket quite pricy. If you are going there, don’t do what we did! There is a weekly market in Benodet on a Monday and there was plenty of fresh and some local unpackaged produce there including herbs, spices, olives, bread, fruit and veg. There were also some local shops and even in the supermarkets there was a lot of unpackaged food so if we had taken the right containers with us (which we didn’t manage – doh) we could have done a lot of our shopping unpackaged. The shop at the campsite had fresh bread and pain au chocolate daily which you could buy unpackaged or in a paper bag for reasonable prices and they had some naked fruit and veg but they were a bit more expensive.  

  At the market in Benodet    What I thought could be improved:  

• They could provide somewhere to put food waste. I got some conflicting information while I was on site about whether there was anywhere to take food waste or not, but I couldn’t find anywhere and the Eurocamp couriers didn’t know of (or use) any food waste bins. 
• They could provide larger or more clothes airers to make it easier to hang out a large load of washing or two
• They could make it really clear to newcomers from day one where the rubbish and recycling points are, as we didn’t realise there were recycling facilities straight away.
• They could not wrap the linen and towels packs (something you pay extra for) in plastic wrap – I don’t think it added anything other than a bit of rubbish to chuck in the bin!

I didn’t investigate every area of the business so there may well have been more good things that they were doing and/ or things that could be improved. Overall though, it was great to be staying somewhere that had taken steps to limit its impact on the environment and we really enjoyed our visit.

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Have you ever been to Brittany or thought about going on holiday there?  I have to admit I hadn’t until Eurocamp got in touch recently asking me if myself and my family wanted to take a trip to review the Green Key awarded La Pointe St. Gilles Campsite in Benodet this summer. Having now spent a really lovely and relaxing couple of weeks there I am now pretty smitten with the area and the site we went to! 

Accommodation

The site:

La Pointe St Gilles is situated in an idyllic location just minutes from a small sandy beach with rock pools, which the kids loved clambering over and searching for wildlife in. A short 10-15 minute walk away is a longer sandy beach in the centre of Benodet teeming with families enjoying the sunshine. The water is crystal clear and although a bit chilly when you first get in, makes a very nice contrast to the heat of the day!

Picture provided by Eurocamp

On site there is a fantastic swimming pool with small and large slides, a lazy river and a variety of pools of varying depths to choose from. The kids absolutely loved the pool and we went swimming most days. It did get a bit packed at times and unless you got there early there wasn’t much hope of getting a sun lounger. We usually ended up finding a chair or two though. If you have younger kids you do have to be a bit careful with them on the bigger slides as they are unsupervised. There were also restaurants, a shop, a good sized playground, a bar with evening entertainment, a kids club, a laundry room, a spa and more on the site!

We were very lucky that the sun shone throughout most of our trip! It did rain a bit, with the worst of it being on the day we left, which worked well for us

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I was recently taken away on holiday with my family by my lovely parents. I felt slightly guilty about the whole thing as this is the first time I have flown anywhere since I started my blog. I love travelling though and although I’ve been happy to have a few years break from flying, the offer of some winter sunshine and a change of scenery was just too good to turn down. Plus there was lots I could still do to save money and be eco-friendly.

1. Secondhand clothes shopping – during the summer I looked out for useful clothes for the holiday for the kids and myself in charity shops. The charity shops tend to put out clothes that are seasonal, so if I waited until before the holiday I might not have found what I was looking for! There is a Scope charity shop near me that sells everything for £1 and I bought a few t-shirts there (£5) for me. I bought a couple of pairs of swimming trunks for the kids in a different shop (another £2). It wasn’t all eco – I bought some croc-a-likes for me and the kids (£9) and a swimming costume (£3) for me in the end of season sales. I spent £19 in total.
2. Clothes not shopping! My mum gave me a couple of dresses and a handbag of hers that she didn’t want any more. The dresses were too long for me so I shortened them. I also chopped the bottom halves off some of the kids trousers that had holes in the knees to make shorts. I mended a pair of flip flops with superglue (it wasn’t a brilliant mend, but did the job for a bit) and replaced a missing button on a skirt. 1 handbag perfect to take on holiday, 2 dresses, 2 pairs of shorts, one mended skirt and a pair of flip flops not purchased meant money saved! I also had some shorts to take on holiday that had been given to me by a friend a couple of years ago.
3. No food waste! I made sure I used up the food in my fridge and on my fruit bowl. I had cream, milk, yogurt, cheese, a very ripe avocado, a couple of ripe kiwis, butternut squash, beetroot and various odds and ends of vegetables to use up. I made:
1. Soup (using up vegetables and cream – I made 6 servings) and then froze it.
2. Beetroot and butternut casserole (it was inspired by this recipe here, but I used cooked cubes of beetroot instead of chickpeas and thyme from my garden instead of tarragon. I also just used the cream I had and replaced the leeks with onions). I froze 3 servings of it in containers, had one and it was delicious! It was also lovely to have some ready made meals to come back to!
3. Kiwi avocado sorbet – you have to try this! It tastes so good – mash and mix overripe kiwi and over ripe avocado together and freeze. It does turn into a solid lump and it is easier to use an ice cube tray so you can just take some of it out to partially defrost at a time. I made 3 servings of this.
4. I froze the milk in an ice cube tray, so that we could have milk available for a cup of tea when we got home and so the milk didn’t go to waste.
5. I also froze the yogurt with the idea that I could use it as a starter for my next batch when I got home.
6. We ate or froze all the other food.
4. Luggage – we got given luggage as a wedding gift a long time ago and it is still going strong. We have 4 suitcase – 2 large ones, a smaller one and an even smaller one. We had enough luggage allowance to take 4 big ones with us, but we decided to use the luggage we had and go way under our allowance. The kids already had bags that were perfect for hand luggage that had come from charity shops.
5. Books – I got several books out the library for myself and the kids before we went. I was even organised enough to suggest the library bought a book and reserve it for when it did. I was really pleased that it came in before I went on holiday! The book was Beth Terry’s Plastic Free – a book I have been meaning to read for a while! 
6. The hotel we were going to had wifi and we had mobile phones so I decided if we wanted to listen to music we could find it on YouTube.
7. Zero waste on the plane – we flew on a budget airline and food wasn’t included in the plane fare, so it was easy to take packed lunch with us. I took empty reusable water bottles through security and bought the largest bottles of water I could find on the other side to fill them up with and to save us buying small bottles on the plane. I could have asked a cafe to fill them up or looked for a water fountain, but I have a chlorine intolerance, so decided to buy bottled water. We saved money on our lunch and although we did buy some crackers and crisps, there was less waste than there could have been. 
8. We didn’t buy any souvenirs while we were there, but we did save small empty jam jars from breakfast, washed them out and brought them home! I find little jam jars so useful for putting things like half a clove of garlic in or some camomile flowers (means I can carry my home grown camomile tea around with me – read more here.)
9. While we were there we made packed lunches instead of eating lunches out, which saved us a lot of money.
10. We bought massive 5 litre bottles of water while we were there (even the locals don’t drink the tap water) and kept decanting it into our reusable bottles. It was much cheaper than buying smaller bottles from the hotel and saved lots of little plastic bottles of water being chucked away.

Feeling inspired after reading Beth Terry’s book, I asked questions about what the hotel does to reduce waste and ended up having a meeting with the hotels head chef. I don’t know how he felt about my suggestions to get a composter and my ideas for how they could waste less food, but he did take them time to meet with me and he said he would raise the idea of composting food waste, so hopefully something positive will come of it!

I don’t know exactly how much money I avoided spending but I would estimate it over £500! £100 or more saved on clothes / bag / shoes bought secondhand/ in the sales/ handed down/ mended, £30 on food not wasted, £50 worth of books taken out the library, if we bought 2 new suitcases for the kids – £80, lunches out every day £200, no music bought or downloaded – £10,  Large bottles of water from supermarket instead of extortionately priced small bottles at the hotel – £50! Plus If I wanted to buy similar mini jam jars they can be bought in packs of 12 for £4 online!

How do you save money and avoid waste on holiday?

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We got this beautiful French 70’s tent from Freecycle (labelled Tentes Caspar) a while ago and had a lovely time camping in it over the weekend with a big group of families from my kids’s school.  We had a rather more modern tent which we used last year camping but it was very cosy with four of us in it (meaning we were all squashed) and so I kept a close eye on the Freecycle and Freegle emails and got in there quickly when I saw an offer of a large tent come up.  It is the heaviest tent in the whole world (ok maybe not the whole world, but it is pretty heavy!), came with no instructions and we really weren’t convinced that a mainly canvas tent would be water proof or that we even had all the bits!   We did a test run in our garden a week before we went and were quite relieved that all the important bits were there and actually it was pretty roomy! It has 3 bedrooms – a big one in the middle and two smaller ones each side and an indoor porch area which was big enough to fit a wallpaper pasting table at one end and to stand up in!      

We did find a hole in one of the bedroom floors which we patched up with duct tape and one of the zips needs replacing on the front porch.  Plus it took quite a long time to put up (a couple of hours) compared to some of the modern tents which go up really quickly, but we weren’t in a rush and it went down much quicker (and apparently some of the pop up tents can be really hard to pack away afterwards)!   I honestly have no idea how much we would have had to pay for something similar as they don’t really sell them like that these days, but new large canvas tents can run into £100’s. In fact we could have easily spent a small fortune on camping equipment if we were buying everything new.

Alongside our free tent however, we borrowed a roof box, used equipment like sleeping bags and a trangia (a small cooking stove) we have had for around 20 years at least. We took a folding wallpapering table which we covered with some spiderman table cloths that I had saved from the bin at a kids party and some folding chairs which my parents had given us that they no longer wanted!  

We hardly bought anything new for the trip, except that my husband couldn’t resist getting a couple of new torches and some walkie talkies for the kids. I was pretty anti the walkie talkies, but actually they came in really handy. It was a great way to check in to make sure the kids were ok and to let them know when it was lunch time but still let them have their freedom with their friends. We also brought all the food with us and tried to go zero waste (ish).  

So the reason I’m writing this blog post is to say that if you want to go camping this summer, don’t want to break the bank but do want equipment with eco credentials, then borrow it or get it for free from somewhere like Freecycle or Freegle.

Reusing unwanted things already in existence and diverting them from landfill is always going to be the most eco-friendly option compared to buying something new and if it is free then all the better! Plus if the stuff you get is a bit different then you will be inadvertently fitting in with the latest camping trends.

I don’t know what it is like in your area, but near Brighton there are various glamping sites (glamorous camping) filled with weird and wonderful things to camp in. One site near me offers nights in a helicopter or a bus, another site has yurts, shepherd huts and a gypsy wagon!  

To be successful at finding things for free, I recommend signing up to the Freecycle and Freegle emails. Read them through as soon as they come in and reply to offers of things you want straight away. I find it really helps to tell people how much you would appreciate what they are giving away and that you will be able to pick it up as soon as possible/ at a time that is convenient to them.  Some people just want to get rid of things fast and if you can get there quickly, you stand a better chance of being given whatever it is.  

Another tip is to start looking for whatever it is you want early. The more time you give yourself to find something the more likely you will find it, plus if it needs fixing up then you have time for that as well.  People have told me that they find the emails annoying after a while, but I just delete them without reading them when I’m not looking for anything in particular and only read them when I actually want or need something and that works well for me.  

If you can’t find what you need being given away then don’t be afraid to ask around if anyone can lend you stuff. Can you imagine how much camping equipment is sitting around unused in people’s lofts, sheds and garages for most of the year? It is very possible that you know someone with camping equipment who could in theory lend it to you. People can always say no and if you feel worried about borrowing things from other people then give them a bottle of wine or something to say thanks or offer to lend them things/ help them out when they need help. I didn’t even ask to borrow a tent before the camping trip we went on, but chatting about the trip before we went I told a few people I really wasn’t sure if our free tent would work and three people very kindly offered to lend me theirs!   I’m not going to lie though, borrowing can have it’s complications as people like things to be fair and managing that can sometimes be tricky, but if you are only going to go camping once a year and especially if this year is your first time (and you are not sure if you are going to like it), borrowing means you can try it out without spending lots of money and that you don’t have to find somewhere to store all that equipment when you are not using it.  Although if you do decide to invest in stuff (or find it for free), you could lend it out to your friends and family when you aren’t using it.   One last idea for getting your camping equipment for free – ask around at festivals if anyone wants to give away theirs afterwards (if you don’t plan on going to a festival, you could ask friends that you know are to look for you). Shockingly (to me anyway), there is a real problem with people who can’t be bothered to take their tents home with them because they find them too tricky to pack away! There is an organisation trying to get people to stop doing this called Love Your Tent – read more about it here.     So if you are thinking of going camping this summer but are put off by exorbitant prices for equipment and are worried about their eco credentials, stop, don’t shop – give the other options a go!  

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We have had lots of play dates, visited family and we did our first house swap! We went and stayed in a house in the South of France and the people whose house we stayed in came and stayed in our house. 

Before we went I have to admit I was pretty nervous about the whole thing.  I wasn’t sure what I was more worried about – going on the train under the Channel (I have never done that before), driving in France late at night (I have never driven on the right hand side of the road before or so late at night), or whether the house we were swapping to would actually be there when we got there! As it was the train ride was a breeze – I really don’t know what I was worrying about, the driving was fine and the house was there when we got there – phew and actually we had the best possible first experience of house swapping we could have had. The things that made it so great were as follows:

• Before we left they provided us with an information leaflet all about their house, their village and things to do in the area.
• On our arrival we were greeted with a welcome notice written in magnets on their fridge, a welcome note and lots of food and drink that they had left for us.  They then had one of their neighbours deliver more food for us! 
• The house itself was really lovely – French country style with pans hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen and lots of beautiful unique artwork displayed around the house.  There were also lots of toys, games and DVD’s there to keep our kids occupied, which was great.
• During the time we were there we kept in contact with the French family over email swapping information about what we were up to and answering questions about each other’s areas.  
• When we arrived home we found they had left us a hamper of food and wine which they had brought with them from France and they also left toy cars for our children.

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Also they included information about where to find local groceries and other produce (perfect for me and my supermarket free living) –  they even gave details about recycling and composting! In case you hadn’t guessed I’m a little bit excited and it’s not just about being able to do local shopping and recycle while on holiday – I’m also looking forward to having a holiday and seeing how well the whole house swapping thing works. I have a bit of work to do now to match their essay, which I think is a really good idea, which once it is done will come in useful for future house swaps as if this works out well I plan to do it regularly!

There is of course the potential that it might not go ahead for whatever reason, or that things could go wrong, but there are things that we can do to reassure ourselves. We have asked for references, which they provided really quickly and we have communicated via a house swapping website which provides a basic house swapping contract that we can use to make sure we are all  on the same page.  We will check we are covered by our home insurance before we go and the site suggests booking travel tickets at the same time and sending each other copies of travel documents, so you both feel reassured all is going ahead.

Assuming it does go ahead, I will write about how the holiday went when we get back!

By the way in case you are wondering the picture at the top is not of a French location – it was from a holiday I went on several years ago to Turkey, but I was just getting in the holiday mood

I am currently undertaking a Year of Eco Challenges . If you have a moment I would really appreciate it if you would consider sponsoring me with an action (no money involved) on my DoNation page. Also if you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!

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